Is archaeology a science

[Jack]

Repeatability independently tested to verify results, yes. 'We' use scientific methods, we may consider our subject a soft science, we can debate archaeology philosophically. At the end of the day, hopefully we do our best to understand the past. It's the best I can do :face-approve:

What on earth is 'soft science'? .......Biology?

[P Prentice]

PP : you might not say you are a scientist - I say that I am

(but apparently its all 'just' interpretive - i hope you don't have any Stratification to deal with....)

Dino : i like your attitude - logical methods and problem solving are a key to (good) field archaeology.

i have been dealing with statification for 30 years and i will always maintain that no two diggers will draw exactly the same lines on any section and the differences are compounded the more complicated the section

we start interpreting sites before a shovel hits the ground and we carry on interpretting every trowel stroke

on a gravel site many diggers wont differentiate between contexts until they draw the section because it is often impossible to dig gravel stratigraphically (unless the context includes other differentiators) and in dino's ditch hypothesis - you may not even be close if you havent emptied the entire ditch

[moreno]

Hard/Soft science (s) are colloquial terms used when comparing fields of scientific and/or academic research/scholarship. Hard sciences i.e. physics, chemistry, human biology, natural and physical sciences are viewed as being more rigorous or accurate in study. Social sciences and other similar disciplines (psychology, evolutionary biology, sociology, anthropology) are perceived as soft.



Familiar with the usage of the term rocket science?

[diggingthedirt]

Ah - that old chestnut! I refer the honourable gentlemen to the answer I gave some moments ago:

http://www.diggingthedirt.com/2009/08/14...xperiment/

...an attempt to explain epistomology - or how we know what we know - to a non specialist audience who suspect that we might be making it all up (for good reason it would seem, given how many archaeologists insist that they are story telling artists, with artefactual props). From the post ' the unrepeatable experiment':

"The problem with archaeology is that our conclusions can never be proven in a laboratory. This has played directly into the hands of the flat-earth people, who believe that because nothing can be know with certainty, all interpretations are equally valid. But just as there are many different scientific subjects, there?s more than one way to do science, and it?s this that gets confused by ?the unrepeatable experiment.?

Archaeology is a historical science (like astronomy or geology), rather than an experimental science (like physics or chemistry), and the difference lies in how those two branches reason with their evidence. Experimental science uses a ?w-n?, or why-necessarily approach to its subject matter. Why does something happen? It necessarily happens in this specific way ? something that other scientists can independently verify. But a historical science can?t be tested in the traditional manner. It has to account for as much evidence as possible while remaining true to our expectations of how the world works today.

This can be extremely difficult, especially when moving back into the further reaches of prehistory where we find objects and behaviours with no modern parallels. Rather than a ?w-n? methodology, archaeologists must adopt a ?h-p?, or how-possibly approach to the evidence. How did it happen? It possibly happened like this, and by drawing on many different independent strands of evidence ? artefacts, ecofacts and scientific analysis such as radiocarbon dating ? statements can be verified by how well they conform to our expectations of what might be humanly possible based on the results of other excavations."

[P Prentice]

hello diggin - i seem to remember reading somethin bout the hist v the exper in geology magazine a long time ago and was struck by the rationale imperative - tis a likeable stance to be sure

but incorporating the results of bonafide independent scientific techniques dont make it a science

[diggingthedirt]

No no - quite the contrary. incorporating 'independent' scientific techniques is our great strength. This allows us to fix an interpretation from many different types of evidence - material and biological science - in effect triangulating our way to the past.

This is precisely the same methodology used in geology/astronomy and no one doubts their scientific credentials. The complicating factor for us is culture, which we cannot assume to be uniform throughout time, unlike the process of solifluction or the orbit of objects around a fixed point.

We are not an 'art' because we do not fabricate our sites. They are the product of the past, and careful observation will detect patterning within and between different sites that is entirely beyond our control.

Everything we do has to be theorised however, and in some sense imagined, from the shape of the roof supported by the postholes to the type of society that gave rise to such a structure.

What kind of ideas do we allow? What techniques can we use to approach the evidence in a more effective manner? Meat and drink to arcaeologists everywhere - the hairy bikers of the scientific community.

All the best, diggin - (eligible bachelor of science).

[moreno]

There is an inherent ambiguity in archaeology: our interpretations and theoretical formulation for understanding the past. The empiricism we utilise in our discipline lays in the use and construction of scientific methodology through pedegogic ideals. What complicates our "science" is the "ethnic" or for others "cultural" understanding and relationship of artefacts to said ethnicities or cultures, the aim of my interest in anthropological archaeology. What difference does it make whether we are a science or use scientific methods to broaden our understanding of the past? Why be so concerned with such a parcimonious definition?

[Wax]

you know I was always under the impression that some of the greatest scientist were people who were able to make a leap of the imagination and think " what if". From the little I understand of the science of sub atomic particle physics it is all about trying to tell the story of what is going on without really knowing what is going on. I am with Moreno on this why get hung up on whether archaeology is science or not? it clearly uses scientific methods and techniques but is not proscribed by them.

[Jack]

Hard/Soft science (s) are colloquial terms used when comparing fields of scientific and/or academic research/scholarship. Hard sciences i.e. physics, chemistry, human biology, natural and physical sciences are viewed as being more rigorous or accurate in study. Social sciences and other similar disciplines (psychology, evolutionary biology, sociology, anthropology) are perceived as soft.



Familiar with the usage of the term rocket science?

I have of course heard the terms bandied by those that don't understand.

The so-called 'hard' sciences are by no means so. It is an illusion created by the media i.e. hard science = fact. Therefore anything that cannot prove facts is not a 'hard' science.

The truth of the matter (from a theoretical physics point of view) is that there are no facts. Only theories that, based on current evidence, seem to hold (for now).

The problem with archaeologists is many don't have a strong grounding in science (many are even scared of it!), and feel that they aren't up to being scientific and that they should define themselves in other terms.

The joke is, of course, by denying the scientific method, conclusions no longer are based on the totality of the evidence. Conclusions become stories with as much validity as 'purple dragons put it there'.

I do not deny that differing fields of study employ different sets of data, each with its own measurement techniques each with inherent errors. Its an understanding of these errors that make any interpretation valid or not.

Anything else is self-delusion.

You may get lucky by following a 'feeling' or hunch or constructing a story based on data selected to fit your own preconceptions/ frame of reference. But more often than not you will eventually fail.

Going 'beyond the evidence' to create an engaging story may seem valid in this world of shiny lights and flashing images, but it is a path doomed to fail.

But conversely, accurate, evidence-based conclusions don't have to be cold or boring. Its just more hard work.

[P Prentice]

i dont really care if anybody thinks its a science or not but i will contradict those that use the assumption to peddle facts which are clearly no such thing - bring on the hypotheses and let us stretch the cresdible once in a while

oh and could one of you scientists point out the last time they changed the peoples perception of archaeology?